The Texas Wolf Girl

The following article is for entertainment purposes only. It is not intended as scholarly research or as a final authority on the topic.

Today’s post is about an unexplained Texas mystery dating back to the 1800s. Because this is a holiday weekend for many people, I’ve purposefully kept today’s post short.

The Beginning: Espantosa Lake

Espantosa Lake is a natural lake in Southwest Texas, located five miles northeast of Carrizo Springs. Even before the events I’m going to talk about, Espantosa Lake had a reputation for being a haunted place.

The legends might have their basis in something as simple as the fog that covers the lake after dark. The spooky stories range from wagonloads of gold and silver lost in the lake to the ghosts of men who have been murdered on the lake’s shores. The story I’m about to tell is going to sound unbelievable. But it’s not just a story I made up.

In May of 1835, a husband and his pregnant wife were camped at Lake Espontosa. The wife went into labor, and the husband went to get help. He was killed in a freak accident but had told others of his wife’s whereabouts. When these good samaritans went to check on her, they found her dead and surmised she died in childbirth. The baby’s remains were never found.

In The Company of Wolves

In 1845, a naked girl with hair covering her body was spotted at San Felipe Springs. She and a pack of wolves were gorging on a freshly killed goat. Once disturbed, the pack ran away. The girl was reported to run both on all fours and on two feet.

Over the course of the following year, numerous reports of this wolf-child surfaced. A hunt was organized, and the girl was captured and taken to a remote cabin. The hunters examined her and found her to be a normal human, aside from the light hair covering her body. Her captors locked her in the cabin and boarded up a window.

Now, this is where it gets weird… (or weirder, depending on how you see things things)

As night fell, eerie howls issued from the girl’s room. Before the hunters knew what was happening, a wolf pack surrounded them. The wolves attacked the livestock and caused general chaos. During the fracas, the wolf-girl managed to escape.

The Wolf Girl of Devil’s River

In 1852, a group of frontiersman claimed to have seen a young woman breast feeding some wolf cubs on the banks of the Devil’s River. As soon as the girl realized she’d been spotted, she grabbed the cubs and ran away.

That was the last eye-witness report of the Texas wolf girl. However, reports of wolves with human facial characteristics surfaced into the 1930s.